Baby name plaque

While heavily pregnant and wanting to do nothing other than make baby things and take naps, I had a thought that I’d like something to put on the wall of the nursery, especially since we’re renting our apartment and wouldn’t be able to paint the room at all. I spent a long time browsing on pinterest, where I spend a great deal of my web surfing time (big shock, I know!) and what I came up with was a set of 3 plaques with contrasting colors, animals, his name and what it means. I did find these on sale on etsy for $45-50, but I figured I could make a version of it myself.

So, off I went to my local craft store armed with a coupon and a pretty well formed idea of what I wanted. What I came home with was:

Three 8 x 10 inch wooden plaques, 3/4 inch thick

Two yellow chevron sheets of scrapbook paper (12 x 12 inch)

Two grey sheets of scrapbook paper (12 x 12 inch)

White paint

One 2 oz bottle of modge podge gloss

With the coupon, all of this came to approximately $24 – half the price I could buy the finished product for, so happy mama!

My trial run was to take a sheet of regular paper and figure out the letter spacing, and to get some practice with the lettering style (I was working from a calligraphy book). Once I was happy with that, I set to work! Firstly, I had to cover the plaques – 2 of them with the yellow chevron paper, and 1 of them with the grey. This is not something you want to rush, as you want to make sure you don’t get wrinkles or air bubbles under the paper. I marked the outline of the plaque onto the back of the paper and applied a thin(ish) layer of the modge podge to that area of the paper. Before gluing the sides, I used a ruler to smooth the surface of the paper, just make sure you do it gently so that you don’t tear the paper, as being wet from the adhesive will make it more delicate. Then, I creased the paper firmly along the edges of the plaques and set to gluing those down all around, again using the ruler to smooth everything. Then came the most difficult part for me – waiting until it was completely dry. I can get impatient with this kind of thing, and this is definitely not the time for that.

Once everything was dry, I used printed animal templates to cut out a giraffe and an elephant from the remaining sheet of grey paper, and used modge podge to glue these onto the yellow plaques. Finally, using my trial run as a guide, I marked out my lettering on the grey plaque with a pencil, and filled it in with white paint. Once the animals were dry, I used a small amount of the paint to add a line to distinguish the elephant’s ear. After all of the paint was dry (I left it overnight, just to be absolutely sure), I covered all 3 with a thin layer of modge podge to seal everything. And that was it! My husband hung them on the wall using velcro command strips, but they would also look cute with these triangular picture hangers and some co-ordinated ribbon.